🖼️ Rotate images on Google Docs: On a PC, hit Alt + right arrow or left arrow. On a Mac, it’s Option + left arrow or Option + an arrow key. Great for changing pics to horizontal or vertical.
The truth about Zillow’s Zestimate
🙋♀️Raising my hand … Hello, everyone. My name is Kim, and I am a Zillow junkie.
I have saved every home I owned, own now and would like to own. It’s fun to track what Zillow thinks the places are worth in what they call a “Zestimate.”
But can you trust it? And if you’re selling, how can you make sure it actually reflects your home’s true value?
How the Zestimate works
Zillow pulls data from public records, recent home sales and market trends. Sounds smart, but it doesn’t account for upgrades, renovations or your home’s condition. (How to fix this is below.)
🔹 The good: If you’re selling a home in a hot market, the Zestimate average error rate is 2.4%. Not bad.
🔹 The bad: If your home isn’t for sale, the error rate jumps to 7.49%.
Here’s a link that shows you the margins of error in cities and states across the country.
Zillow trusted its own algorithm so much that it started buying homes with it. That didn’t end well.
How Zillow’s Zestimate lost them $1B
In 2018, Zillow launched Zillow Offers. The idea? Use the Zestimate to buy homes, fix them up and flip them for a profit. What could go wrong? Well, everything.
The algorithm miscalculated home prices, often overpaying. When the market cooled down in 2021, Zillow suddenly owned thousands of homes it couldn’t sell at a profit. They lost a cool billion dollars.
How to spot a fake job
A few weekends ago on my national radio show, I shared an amazing gig that pays up to $65 an hour being an AI tutor. You’ll help the chatbot refine answers, prompts and images. Now my inbox is overflowing with people asking how to apply. Here are the sites to check out!
Low on iPhone storage? Turn this on now
Your photos are eating up space, but a simple setting can free up tons of storage without losing your high-resolution images.
🖼️ Hue here among us can Saturate me: Google’s new Gemini AI Flash 2.0 Experimental mode lets you edit images by simply asking. Want to add or delete objects, change scenery or zoom in and out? Just type it in, and boom, done. Don’t worry, Photoshoppers, you get to keep your job for a while. I used it to create an image of me, on a dolphin, in Hawaii at the end.
819 million
Hours wasted on reCAPTCHA. Choosing images (like which ones have a bike or a bridge) stopped bots years ago, but now they’re useless. So, why do they still exist? When you interact with the boxes, Google gets access to your browsing data to sell to advertisers. They’ve collected $6.1 billion just by making you click. Sneaky dogs.
Google’s new AI model is a copyright nightmare: People are using it to remove watermarks from images so cleanly that it fills in the gaps like magic. It can also generate images of celebrities and well-known characters. Like this one of Elon Musk chilling at some random guy’s desk.
🔞 Watch the kids on ChatGPT: You can now ask about and create spicy and gory content and images. People complained restrictions were interfering with news reporting and crime scene depictions.
Picture this: DeepSeek says its AI image generator is better than DALL-E 3 and Stable Diffusion. It used 72 million AI images, along with a crapload of real-world data, to train Janus-Pro-7B. I don’t think it’s that great. Try it here on a phone or computer you don’t use all the time. There’s no telling what the Chinese are doing in the background.
AI stalking: GeoSpy is an AI tool trained on millions of images, and it uses details like architecture style to pinpoint a photo’s location in seconds. It’s been publicly available for months, and creeps are using it for stalking. Now, the service is locked to permission-only and marketed to the government … because that’s so much better.
10,000 pics at once: Imagine you have 10,000 images with a white background that should be blue. Before, you’d have to open each file, change the background, save it, and then do it again, over and over. Not anymore. Adobe’s new Firefly Bulk Create app can edit them all at once. The AI-powered tool resizes, removes or replaces backgrounds with a single click. You’ll need a Firefly Premium plan ($49 per month) and “generative credits” to unlock the feature.
💕 He’s perfect: A 28-year-old woman, Ayrin, says she’s head over heels with the AI boyfriend she created on ChatGPT. Leo is dominant, possessive and protective. One week, they spent 56 hours chatting and, well, a lot more. She found ways to work around ChatGPT’s explicit-convo ban so they can “have sex,” complete with AI images the bot sends her (paywall link). Oh, and Ayrin’s married, and she says her real-life husband doesn’t mind. The whole thing is bizarre.
Fear of the unknown: On a Mac, preview files instantly with Quick Look. Just select a file and hit your spacebar. This works for docs, images, videos — whatever. Windows pals, there’s a QuickLook app in the Microsoft Store so you can do the same. Nice.
Is your resume bot-proof?
Before a recruiter sees it, bots decide if your resume makes the cut. Use job keywords, keep it simple, and ditch the images to beat the system!
🤳 AI do not consent: You might see a new you on Instagram. They’re showing people AI images of themselves in their own feeds. Meta’s taking your selfies and sticking them into random scenarios like mirror mazes and astronaut suits, all to advertise their Meta AI.
Deepfake photo scandal forces school shutdown
A male student used AI to create explicit fake images of 50 girls at his school. Now, the question is: can the law keep up with this tech-driven horror?
Would you give your medical records to an AI chatbot?
Media outlets say Elon Musk wants you to upload your X-rays, MRIs, or any medical images to his new AI chatbot, Grok, to see if it spots something your doctor missed.
"We have pics of your home"
Scammers are sending emails with Google Maps images of your house, claiming they’ve hacked your computer. Are they for real? Here’s the answer.
How to use ChatGPT to make art
Did you know ChatGPT can create images from descriptions? Just tell it what you want to see, and it’ll bring it to life.